Eleanor Antin Brings BUBBE MEISES to the Jewish Museum, 1/28

The Jewish Museum will present Bubbe Meises, a reading performance with artist Eleanor Antin, on Monday, January 28 at 11:30am. Antin will read excerpts of Conversations with Stalin, her unpublished coming-of-age memoir about growing up in a family of first generation Jewish immigrants in New York City. This program is the first of a series in which Antin will read the complete Conversations with Stalin over the course of a week at four different venues in New York City. Additional readings will take place at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts on January 29 at 6pm; the Brooklyn Museum on January 31 at 7pm; and the Whitney Museum of American Art on February 1 at 6:30pm. Eleanor Antin's Conversations with Stalin is a smart, no holds barred, black comedy in the picaresque tradition of Holden Caulfield and Huck Finn.

Tickets for the January 28 reading are $15, general public; $12, students and 65+; and $10, Jewish Museum members. For further information regarding programs at The Jewish Museum, the public may call 212.423.3337. Tickets for lectures, film screenings and concerts can be purchased online at TheJewishMuseum.org.

Eleanor Antin grew up in the heart of New York in the early days of the Cold War. Her family of first generation Jewish immigrants was headed by her crazy, bohemian, Stalinist mother, who kept the family in a state of chaos with her desperate attempts to rescue a series of failing hotels in the Catskills, while casting off a boring husband, in her search for culture and meaning in the new world. The dysfunctional family would set the tone of young Elly's childhood and teen years, fueling her desperate, endearing, and often hilarious quests for art, self, revolution and sex. Through it all, Comrade Stalin remains her imaginary confidant. And while Elly's idealist vision of him eventually crumbles, he would also be a loving father figure during a dark time.

Impatient with the timidity of the current publishing world, Antin is bringing this memoir directly to the public through a series of performance readings in museums, art spaces and universities around the country. In New York, Antin will be reading the entire memoir Conversations with Stalin over a single week, with four consecutive chapters read at each of four sites. This will allow the memoir to be experienced from beginning to end in the city where it all happened. Antin?s stand up, punchy and inventive style allows the audience to enjoy any or all of the unique readings whether they attend one or attend all four.

As one of the first artists to re-introduce autobiography, narrative, and performance to art world during the late 1960s, Eleanor Antin created an imaginary theatre, dramatizing contemporary personal and political narratives through a style of historical time travel. From the iconic lives of her three personas (King, Ballerina, and Nurse) to the ancient world as a filter to understand our own world, Antin has been in the forefront of post-modern art.

Antin works in a variety of media, including photography, video, film, performance, installation, drawing and writing. She has had many one-woman exhibitions, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Her works are in collections around the world. She has performed at the Venice Biennale, Documenta 12, and the Sydney Opera House. She is represented by Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York City.

An infrared assistive listening system for the hearing impaired is available for programs in the Museum's S. H. and Helen R. Scheuer Auditorium.

Public Programs at The Jewish Museum are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. Major annual support is provided by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. The stage lighting system has been funded by the Office of Manhattan Borough President Scott M. Stringer.